Prima Luna
by rockadaisy
Summary: Luna Lovegood's first year at Hogwarts...wait, she existed back then? Who knew.
1. Platform Nine and Three Quarters

**A.N. **I own nothing. Seriously. Nothing. And I'm sorry this chapter is so short, I just got bored and started writing and then... stopped when I felt done. The other chapters will probably be short too, to match my attention span...

**Chapter One  
****_Platform Nine and Three Quarters_**

Luna stared up at the train in awe. It was amazingly large, at least the size of two Horned Humpledings put together, and soon, it would take her to Hogwarts for the first time in her life. She had pressed her dad hopefully for information- what it would look like, what they had to eat, what lessons she would take- but he had just ruffled her hair beneath his hand and smiled fondly. She had never spent much time with children her own age, and now found herself squeezed in the middle of the huge crowd on the station platform. Girls with their hair plaited neatly, waving tearfully to their mothers, boys joking around loudly.

Her mother had been in Ravenclaw. Luna thought she might like to be in Ravenclaw, too.

To her left, she spotted a boy a bit older than herself, laughing sharply with two heavy-looking boys. He had light hair, like hers but shorter, pale blonde that seemed to reflect the light. She watched as he crossed his arms in annoyance as one of the bigger boys punched the other in the arm. The blonde boy caught her looking and scowled unpleasantly. She smiled and waved.

"Hello!" She greeted as she walked toward them. "My name is Luna Lovegood and I am eleven years old. I'm waiting for the train, as I'd imagine you are as well. Were you at Hogwarts last year? Did you like it?"

The boys all stared at her with strange expressions on their faces. Finally, one of the larger boys spoke up. "Why don't you go back to your mummy, 'Luna Lovegood'."

"I can't." She answered calmly. "She's dead. What classes did you take? I hope there's a class in Magickal Animal Studies. I think that would be very informative, and useful, don't you?"

The pale, thin boy in the front looked at her curiously, then sneered. "Lovegood. I know you. Your father's the editor of that piece of filth paper. They'll let just about anyone into this school, I suppose."

Luna stared unblinkingly at him. "That wasn't very nice."

He grinned. "No, I guess it wasn't. Then again, I don't usually go out of my way to be nice to ugly little blood traitors."

Luna watched his two friends slap him on the back encouragingly. As soon as their big, ape-like palms touched him, he winced visibly. "I know you, too." She said softly.

"Of course you do, you stupid girl. I'm a Malfoy."

"You are a sad little boy who has to bully people to make them play with him, and I feel very, very sorry for you." She turned on her heels and airily walked back over to where her father was sitting, head bent over his newspaper and ink smudged on his nose. She planted a kiss on his cheek and did not look back toward the three boys again.


	2. Making Friends

**Chapter Two  
_Making Friends_**

Luna took a seat in an empty carriage and watched her father give a funny little wave, then wander back toward the exit. She could still see him in her mind, sitting at the breakfast table with his quill tucked behind his ear, and she suddenly felt a wave of emotion knock into her like she'd been attacked by a chimaera. She wouldn't see him again until Christmas. She had never been separated from her father for such a long period of time, not even more than a night since her mother died. She didn't cry though. She thought she might, but it turned out she just didn't feel like it.

A girl with light brown hair in bouncy pigtails took a seat across from her and grinned widely. She immediately threw her jumper over the space beside her and stared anxiously out the window. Seconds later, a pretty girl with a blonde ponytail bounded in and jumped into the saved seat. She spared a glance at Luna, who was silently observing the two girls with her long hair falling messily over her shoulders and her wand tucked ceremoniously behind her ear. The girl's ponytail waved behind her as she giggled and poked her pigtailed friend. They both looked at Luna. They both giggled. Luna laughed too, loud enough to fill the carriage. Amusement turned to annoyance and they turned away from her to whisper and giggle and once and awhile peek out the glass door to the outside hallway of the train.

Another girl came in, pale-faced and freckled. She shyly nodded to Luna who, completely forgetting about her other new friends, nodded back with a smile.

"I'm Ginny" she said quietly.

"Luna."

"That's pretty. I hate my name."

"Ginny?"

The red-headed girl shook her head vehemently. "No..." She looked around the compartment as if to make sure no one else was listening. The two other girls were now fully absorbed in their latest activity, pressing their faces to the glass door and staring fixedly into the cabin across from them. "Ginevra. Awful, right?"

"I like it. It suits you." Luna smiled again. Ginny blushed.

"Did you see Harry Potter?"

"No," Luna replied casually. "Why, is he here?" Now it was Luna's turn to look in all directions around the compartment.

Ginny laughed. "Not here! Out there, in the compartment with my brother probably. Lucky Ron." She blushed a little more. "You know he came over to my house? And I stuck my elbow in the butter dish. I wanted to die!"

"Why?"

"Because I was so embarrassed!"

Luna tilted her head thoughtfully. "I don't think I've ever felt embarrassed. Once, I got lifted up into the air by a particularly large fairy, right up by the ear. She was really strong. But then my father caught her in a jar, a big jar, of course. We let her go after, but it made me feel kind of funny... I don't think I felt embarrassed though. It must have been something else. Maybe it was just that my ear hurt. Fairies have very pointy fingers."

Ginny gave her an odd look. Luna wasn't sure what it meant, but then she laughed. It wasn't the same kind of laugh the other girls had used, it seemed nicer, and when Luna laughed too, Ginny just laughed harder.


	3. The Book

**Chapter Three  
_The Book_**

"So your brother goes to school here?"

Ginny laughed bitterly. "Brothers three, four, five, and six... One and two already graduated."

Luna looked wistful. "That would be lovely."

"Are you joking?" Ginny scoffed. "It's a nightmare!"

"You must never be lonely."

Ginny shook her head, but looked a little less angry. "It's hard, being the youngest. Never really anything special, anything I could ever want to do would have already been done six times. I am the only girl, though," she reasoned. "Better than nothing. Are you getting anything from the snack cart?" She bounced her knee up and down excitedly as the cart approached the door. "I love cauldron cakes. Mum never buys them anymore, not since Charlie went off to Romania."

"Oh, I don't eat cauldron cakes." Luna responded solemnly. "Did you know they're made by enslaved goblins? It's really awful."

"...Sounds it. Well, it doesn't matter anyway, Mum packed me a lunch." Ginny dove into her knapsack for her lunch, but came up with a small black notebook. "Well that's weird. I don't remember packing this. I don't even think it's mine." She flipped through the first few pages. "Empty. Mum probably gave it to me to 'record all of the wonderful memories of adolescence' or whatever she was going off about at the station."

"I always keep a journal." Luna said sagely. "I see things all the time that I wish I could remember later, but there's so many things that I sometimes forget one or two. So I write them down."

"Nothing interesting ever happens to me." Ginny frowned and shoved the journal back into her bag, pulling out a crumpled brown paper bag instead. She peeked inside and grimaced.

"Maybe things do happen, but you just forgot because you didn't write them down."

Ginny thought this over for a second, and then shrugged her shoulders. "Dunno."

"Is Charlie one of your brothers?" Ginny nodded through a mouthful of her sandwich. "I wish I had a brother or a sister, really." Ginny looked pained for a second, then stuck her hand back in her bag and pulled out the black book again.

"Here." She held it out to Luna. Luna took it in her hands and brushed her fingertips along the worn leather. She felt a dark chill creep up her hands and arms and right into her chest. She gasped softly. "It's very nice..." she said, politely.

"Take it. S'yours." Ginny said with a bright smile. "I'll probably never use it, and this way you can write down all the stuff you'd want to tell a sister. You could even give it back to me, and we could write back and forth. If you wanted to, I mean." Luna shivered. This was not a nice journal. She didn't like it at all.

"No thank you." She said, struggling to form a smile. "I have one from my mother." Ginny's face fell, but even though she felt bad, Luna couldn't help but breath a sigh of relief when Ginny took the book back and put it back in her knapsack. "I'm sorry," Luna added as an afterthought.

"It's all right. Guess I'll just have to write in the dumb thing myself." She laughed, and Luna smiled, already feeling much better.

"Do you know anything about Hogwarts? With all your brothers going there?"

"Oh, loads! When you get there, you have to put the Sorting Hat on and it tells you which house you'll be in. I know I'll be Gryffindor, but wouldn't it be funny if I were something awful, like Slytherin? Bet Mum would send me a Howler. Percy wouldn't even talk to me. Then the food just appears on the table, anything you could possibly want. Then you go to your House dorms and, well, you sleep, I guess. We take all sort of classes like Charms and Defense Against the Dark Arts and then Potions with that ugly old Professor Snape. Oh, and flying classes, too!" Ginny suddenly got very quiet. "I think...maybe...I'll try out for the Quidditch team. I know I won't get on, but Harry did it last year and he was only eleven, too... just... don't tell anyone, okay?"

Luna nodded mindlessly, her head still reeling with everything Ginny had told her. For every answer, a thousand more questions. She wondered what her father would do if she got sorted into Slytherin. He probably wouldn't send a Howler...but she had always loved the snakes in the garden behind their house. What if she got sorted into Slytherin and Ginny wouldn't talk to her anymore? What if Ginny's mother sent _her_ a Howler? Well, she most likely wouldn't do that, as they had never met and that would be very rude... Ginny excused herself to change into her school robe, and Luna stayed seated, drifting through thought. She had just come to the conclusion that she would be satisfied with whichever House she was placed in, under the belief that the hat would know better than she did, when Ginny came rushing back into the compartment, red faced and breathless.

"My stupid prat of a brother isn't on the train!"


	4. Thestrals

A.N. I have been caught in a foolish mistake. Consider it corrected. My apologies.

**Chapter Four  
****Thestrals**

"Are you sure?" Luna asked, wide-eyed.

"Of course, I'm sure!" Ginny screeched. "I double checked! Ooooh, mum'll have his hide for this! How is he going to get to school?

"Well, Hogwart's is quite far," Luna reasoned, "perhaps he'll fly."

Ginny snorted. "You haven't seen my brother on a broom. He couldn't fly over a candlestick." Suddenly she looked struck dumb. "I didn't see Harry either." She whispered in a horrified voice.

Luna tried to soothe and comfort the best she could, but it had never been her strongpoint, never having had much practice at it. She could see the station in the distance up ahead when she looked out the window, and even Ginny craned her neck to catch a teary peek, still sniffling helplessly.

* * *

When they got off the train, the older students were herded toward a long row of carriages led by the strangest animals Luna had ever seen. She wondered to herself why more people weren't looking, as they were absolutely captivating. Sleek and black, with glinting dark eyes and large wings folded delicately at their sides. Then it clicked. "Thestrals..." she whispered under her breath. "They're real..." 

"What are?" Ginny asked distractedly, eyes darting every which way for a glimpse of her missing brother.

"Don't you see them?" Luna asked, not taking her eyes of the creatures for a second. "No... I suppose you wouldn't, would you... I just never... I thought maybe he was making those up..." She could remember the event quite clearly. After all, it had only been two years earlier when her father had taken a shell-shocked Luna aside and told her a pretty story about how, though sometimes bad things happen, beauty can come out of tragedy. Words were her father's greatest power, but even then, at a mere nine years of age, Luna knew- she knew- that he was lying. There were no such thing as thestrals, and her mother was dead.

She walked closer, raising her hand slowly to one of the leathery black wings and stroking it softly. The thestral made a deep grumbling noise and brought his neck up straight and proud to look Luna in the eye. His eyes were black, almost frighteningly so, but Luna had never seen such a beautiful thing in her life.

"What are you doing?" Ginny asked. "With your hand?"

"Nothing," Luna murmured, lowering it immediately. "See your brother?"

"No... but wait!" Ginny jumped up onto the balls of her feet. "Percy! Percy over here!"

Luna followed the path of Ginny's focus. A tall, thin boy with carefully styled red hair and horn-rimmed glasses glanced over with an annoyed expression, then began to walk toward them.

"Ginny." He greeted coolly. "Is there anything I can help you with?" Ginny grabbed at his robes with her hands balled into fists, pulling him down to her level.

"Ron is missing! He wasn't on the train! Neither was Harry!"

Percy's jaw slackened a bit, then snapped back shut. "Of course Ron is here. Don't be silly."

"He." She shook him for emphasis. "Isn't. Here."

Percy straightened, using his hands to smooth over the fabric of his robe where Ginny's hands had wrinkled it. "I will mention this immediately to the heads of houses once we arrive at Hogwarts. In the meantime, I would suggest you and your friend here join the others by the pier." Percy seemed ready to turn and leave them, but then lowered his hand to pat the top of Ginny's head fondly. "Go on then." He smiled slightly and walked back over to the group he had been talking with before.

As they walked toward the boats swaying gently in the water, Luna stayed silent, thinking back on what she had seen. She would have to owl father straightaway.


End file.
